Action! Glenorchy and Queenstown

The drive over the southern alps from Haast to Queenstown wasn’t too bad.  It was raining until we got over the pass but the road followed the Haast River valley and was not as winding as I thought it might be.  There were great views of waterfalls cascading down the mountainsides. We stopped to see Fantail Falls, not a very high waterfall, but pretty. 

The Haast river comes from the glaciers and has very cloudy water and a very broad pebbly floodplain. Soon after the pass the vegetation changes dramatically from mossy forests to windswept plains and the rain pretty much stopped too. We stopped in Makarora after 90 km for a cup of coffee, a bacon and egg pie and a warm berry muffin.  We then drove along 2 long lakes bordered by rocky pastures for sheep, cows and deer.  Another rainbow harkened clearer skies this time.

South of Wanaka we passed by vineyards and orchards until following the Kawarau River through a deep gorge over to Queenstown. Queenstown was very busy with tour buses, campervans, and people.  It’s the adventure capital of New Zealand and so far nearly everyone we’ve met has gone through or is planning to go through Queenstown.  We parked in a parking garage and found our way to an I-Site to collect maps.  Then we wandered around town to get our bearings. We’ve been trying to find an audiobook with CDs to listen to in the car because we can’t seem to download one and play it from our devices without wireless.  However, so far no bookstores have carried audiobooks. 

We had lunch at a Thai restaurant overlooking the busy lakefront area where the jetboats and steamboat dock.  Jake’s Tom ka gai soup was really good.  My chicken with chilis and basil mediocre. 

Parasailing and steamer in Queenstown

View from the Glenorchy wharf

I had booked a room at the Lodge in Glenorchy thinking that it was on the other side of Queenstown and would make our drive shorter, but it is a 45 minute drive up the lake from Queenstown on a curvy road with lots of one way bridges.  It’s a very small town but peaceful and with several lodging and dining options.  I think even Jake is glad to be here instead of in Queenstown.

We took a walk from town around and through the lagoon at the end of the lake.  The town recently finished a really nice walking path with long boardwalks through the lagoon. 

Boardwalk through the lagoon in Glenorchy

Lagoon plants and clouds

We dined in the informal café at our lodge, a nice piece of salmon for Jake and fried blue cod for me with salads. And a very good glass of pinot noir (it was their good wine, as opposed to the house wine). The salads in NZ are really tasty in general – very fresh lettuces and assorted other veggies with good vinaigrettes.  I don’t think we’ve had a bad salad yet!

After a good egg and ciabatta toast breakfast at our café, we drove out of town and across the Dart River to do a morning hike around Sylvan Lake.  The walk starts going across a suspended bridge over a river and through an old beech forest.  There was intermittent sun lighting up the mosses, lichens and ferns.  It was such a green forest from treetops to ground level.  Definitely a place for wood sprites or hobbits.

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Sylvan Lake

possum trap baited with an egg

beech woods near Sylvan Lake

By the time we reached the lake the surrounding mountains were shrouded in clouds.  We walked around the edge of the lake up to the far end through more beautiful beech forest then backtracked back to the car.  It was almost 2pm by the time we got back to Glenorchy and raining hard.  We are wiling away the afternoon first attempting to get internet access in the café over a cup of tea and a warm slice of very good apple strudel (we skipped lunch), and reading.  Tomorrow we have booked a 5 hour horseback ride and another night here since I already know that a hot shower will be necessary to relieve aching muscles.  Monday we’ll find a camp site in the morning and do a rafting trip on the Shotover river in the afternoon. 

Sunday horseback ride

We did our horseback ride through High Country Horses, located on the road to Kinloch past Glenorchy.  The ride was the “river deep mountain high” ride, from 9am to 4:30pm.  Jake and I could barely walk afterwards but it was a splendid ride (I’m sure Jake would have liked one of those CO mountain highs afterwards). I rode a pretty honey-colored station breed horse named Paddy and Jake rode Doobie.  Both were pretty well behaved except for the usual problem of wanting to stop and eat.  Paddy knew exactly what to do so I gave him his head most of the time. We started out going up the river floodplain crisscrossing lots of channels of the river.  The deepest crossing was probably about 3 ft. deep.  We walked most of the time excepting a few short trots and canters along more open, less rocky parts of paths.  The floodplains were covered in lupines, evidently a favorite horse food. Eventually we went uphill into part of Mt. Aspiring National Park through an old beech forest along the edge of the river.  This part of the ride had lots of relatively steep up and down sections. 

Adele picking blackberries

Our guide, Adele, from France, had chosen a stubborn younger horse who she had to eventually get off and lead at a few points. She’s here on a work-holiday visa. The other riders were a young couple from Denmark who were pretty good riders, and me and Jake.  Eventually we returned to the river and stopped for lunch under some young beech trees. Jake and I were a little sore at lunch, but could still walk around easily.  A nice thick sandwich of ham and veggies, a big cookie, and a crisp NZ apple revived us.  You could refill your water bottle from the stream, although we declined to do so just not being able to get over my distrust of stream water.  The Danish couple took dozens of photos of themselves along the way and at lunch time using their selfie stick and with her fluffing out her long blond hair.  I think I'm past the age of caring much about how glamorous my selfies look.  

We crossed the river and rode part way back along a gravel road that led past the Invincible gold mine and sheep pastures.  Then we went into a willow forest with a small clear stream running through.  The horses walked up the shallow stream with the willows forming a green tunnel overhead.  So much for clean, clear water.  Both Jake and I were feeling pretty bad at this point with muscle aches from the waist down but we soldiered on.  There were more stream crossings, but I forewent any more cantering opportunities in deference to some small hip muscle that kept seizing up.  Anyway, it was a huge relief when the barn hove into view!

We had dinner across the street at the Glenorchy Hotel’s restaurant.  We split an order of garlic bread and venison medallions served with steamed vegetables and some potatos.  Quite nice, accompanied by Kiko Bay Pinot Noir.

Monday

After breakfast we left Glenorchy and set up our tent down the lake at the 12 Mile Delta DOC campground.  A lot of people were leaving as we were setting up and we got a decent site with at least a little space between us and the other campers.  Come nightfall the campground was pretty full with a few last campers driving around looking for spots.  We drove into Queenstown, got a pie for a light lunch (they are small pies), took a short walk over to the Queenstown Garden (nice, more park than garden) and checked in for our Queenstown Rafting trip on the Shotover River. 

The rafting company runs two trips, one on the Shotover River with grade 3 and 4 rapids and a calmer “family” trip on another river.  All rafting participants are bussed to their headquarters about 10 minutes outside of town where you change into wetsuits and get a helmet and life jacket. The Shotover bus then takes you about 40 minutes upriver.  It isn’t that far but the road is a very narrow gravel road.  We applauded our driver at the end of the ride.  There are some wicked curves barely wide enough for the bus to get around as it is towing rafts, and the road has very steep cliffs with no guard rails. Sit on the left if you don’t like heights!  The road follows the route that goldminers took to get from the river and their claims into Queenstown.  One of the guides gives a running commentary on the history and landscape.

Once at the river we got our safety instruction and were divided into groups.  Our group consisted of a Texan who had recently rafted the Zambesi River and was recently laid off from a job in the oil industry, 2 Oklahomans, one retired and the other in the wine business who were on their 4^th rafting trip in NZ on this visit, and a woman radiologist from Scotland on her first rafting trip.  The guide, Keith, had grown up in the area and his grandfather had worked mining scheelite near Glenorchy (tungsten is extracted from scheelite). He and his grandfather used to pan for gold in the Shotover and his grandfather accumulated enough to melt and make into a gold bracelet for his wife he and his wife’s 50^th anniversary.  Apparently a farming family discovered gold in the river in the 1860s when their dog jumped in and emerged flecked with gold.  The hills were mined and later the river was dredged for gold.

It was a lovely day, sunny and warm, and river was running well with recent rains.  The water was a little cloudy because of the rain, but sort of a light blue color.  The surrounding hills are fairly bare with glittery mica schist rock in thin layers.  The rock is unstable and landslides change the flow of the river and sometimes create new rapids.   The first big rapid was the Rock Garden and although our raft got through fine, every other raft got hung up in the hole behind a big rock.  Our guide through a rope to one raft and pulled it out with help.  Others got out on their own.  There were some fun chutes of water in narrow parts of the river.  Towards the end you go through a tunnel an ambitious miner built in an attempt to divert the river.  He wanted to mine the dry riverbed but the tunnel size was wrong and only half of the river went through the tunnel.  Right after the tunnel was an exciting rocky waterfall of sorts and then you are almost back to the headquarters.  We took a hot shower at the base and caught the bus back into town.  

We didn’t find this rafting trip to be as thrilling as the one in Argentina near Mendoza, but it was beautiful and some of the rapids were definitely challenging.  They also do that section of the river in winter helicoptering you in.

We had a nice dinner on the lakefront in Queenstown at the BathHouse, which probably was the original bathhouse for the beach.  We ordered the seafood platter to share which took forever to arrive, but was very tasty.  There was a piece of cooked cod, some grilled squid and shrimp, smoked salmon, mussels in a barbecue-like sauce, some fish dip, breads and crackers, capers and pickles, and fresh fruit.  Accompanied by a glass of Kopiko Bay sauvignon blanc.

Steamer returns from its sunset cruise

So much for our nice quiet campsite by the lake.  A group of German youth are playing loud music accompanied by singing to the repeated lyric, VODKA!  Some Russian hard rock music I think.  Interesting, while lying on the beach in Wellington some German youth were playing music that was some sort of rap music to the tune of “It’s a Hard Knock Life” from the musical Annie.  I am not developing a high opinion of German youth who are vacationing in NZ!  PS The music went on intermittently until 2 am.  Intermittent because they were asked several times to turn it off, including by Jake around midnight and after that by a Kiwi or Australian yelling “Fucking turn that shit off” which led Jake to stay awake wondering how one would parse that sentence.  We plotted revenge but did not act on our schemes.